This blog is by a long-time Oracle storage professional who has history with both NetApp and EMC.

May 2008

May 16, 2008

I read Jason Kotsaftis's recent blog post with interest, since I too
am very biased. Rather than commenting on Jason's post (everyone knows comments very
seldom get read), I thought I would wade in with my own take on this
issue.

When I came to EMC, I was shocked at how Microsoft-centric we are. Not
that Microsoft is an uninteresting technology space. Far from it. I
simply maintain that Oracle is more interesting, and that Oracle has
been woefully neglected by EMC in the past (although that is turning
around rapidly due to the great work of folks in Jason's organization).

Looking at the two spaces: Microsoft and Oracle, which is more
interesting for us? I maintain that Oracle is more interesting because
of several factors:

First is the halo effect. I talk about this a lot, but for those
who don't know me, here is the idea. Oracle is the most expensive piece
of software ever written for general purpose use. (It is also the most
complex.) To give you an idea of the cost of Oracle, I recently visited
with a major Fortune 500 company and met with their DBA group. They
shared the cost of their Oracle license with me. That cost for them is
$22 per GB per month. They have petabytes of this stuff. Think about
that for a minute. That is an astounding number. This company is
launching an entire project to reduce the cost of the Oracle license,
because it is such a huge component of their IT budget. The effect of
the fact of the cost of Oracle is simply this: The customer cares, and
cares deeply, about the Oracle infrastructure. It is their crown jewel.
They have paid dearly for it. In order to play in that space, you need
to be the most enterprise-ready, robust, reliable, resilent technology
in there entire environment. What does this mean for you? If you can
store and manage the Oracle database data, you are by definition the
best vendor in their datacenter. You are handling and helping manage
the customer's most important, expensive, precious environment. Are you
then good enough to store and manage the Microsoft data? I would say,
virtually by definition, yes. So, if you qualify yourself to store
Microsoft data, you do not automatically qualify yourself to store
Oracle data. On the other hand, if you have qualified yourself to store
the Oracle database data, you are almost all of the way there in
building credibility in the Microsoft space, especially with the higher
level managers in the customer's organization who have visibility into
both those technology spaces. This is the halo effect. It is very real.
I have seen this work in exactly this manner many, many times in my
career.

Of the two companies, Microsoft and Oracle, who is more aligned
with EMC? Microsoft still makes the vast majority of their revenues off
of the sale of consumer-oriented desktop software. Oracle is truly the
enterprise software company. They dwarf Microsoft in that space. This
is exactly the business we are in. If you look at the Symmetrix and
compare it to Oracle, it amazing how many similarities there are in
terms of the market they address. We own this space and so do they.

Is Microsoft easier? Absolutely. Oracle is a tough company to work
with. They have a killer technology and they know it. They want to own
the market. They do not believe that they need us. They know we need
them. Their technology is far more complex and difficult than Microsoft.

All of that is true. But people make money doing things that
are hard. Doing a great job of addressing the Oracle market will yield
huge rewards, far beyond the costs of doing so. I strongly support the
effort of Jason, Jeff, and Vince in building the Oracle relationship,
and I am in for the long haul in helping them to do so.

disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my personal opinions. I am a blogger who works at EMC, not an EMC blogger. This is my blog, and not EMC's. Content published here is not read or approved in advance by EMC and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of EMC.